Pendulum
by TheVelvetDusk
Summary: "It's with a conscious, purposeful swallow that he locks away the terror in his chest. Every time they do this, he knows it could be the end. They could vanish forever - easily, unsurprisingly, incontestably." {lyatt oneshot, post-S2 universe} (TFP)


_a/n:_

 _This is written from the perspective of future!lyatt before they really become future!lyatt, if that makes sense. Snippets of their trial-and-error phase before they make the trip to save Rufus._

 _This is an entry for June TFP #3: "So it turns out we're not actually gonna die after all."  
_ " _Dammit."_

 _Anddd obviously I'm heartbroken about our show, but that heartbreak turned into a last-ditch prompt fill, so at least there's that :/ There are still many of us fighting the good fight on twitter (yay, Mission: Paperclip), so let's all go down swinging, ok?_

* * *

He's waiting. Waiting for his body to slowly pull itself apart atom for atom, splattering through the wormhole loop-de-loop of time and space and oblivion. Little bits of his matter becoming nothing more than discarded litter along the coastal highway of foreign, inaccessible galaxies.

Or something like that. Rufus would have corrected him on the finer points, but the only reason Wyatt is this close to disintegrating into the void is because Rufus _can't_ correct him.

Now there's a real loop.

Wyatt's been waiting for a lot of things. Waiting to die is just the newest addition. He's mostly been waiting for Jiya and Connor to iron out the finer points of this plan, anticipating the all-clear to take this hunk of metal out for the one mission that weighs heavily in the background of his every moment, every breath, every thought. He's waiting to get his favorite tell-no-shit nerd back. That's what each member of their full team collectively waits on, and it makes them all crazy just as much as it binds them all together.

Wyatt's waiting on a few other things, too. Like waiting for Lucy to say the word. Or the three words. Or _any_ words. He's waiting to live again in the only way that matters.

She loves him. He knows it. She doesn't even try to hide it anymore.

The timeline is muddled in his head. Ironic, but true. Timelines are rarely clear to him anymore, just fuzzy dots on an unpredictable slope. A few constants which are continually outweighed by variables that can't be charted. His relationship with Lucy is no different.

She falls asleep on him with the plot of so many movies unspooling over the TV screen, couples falling for each other, losing each other, finding each other again. Dufus-faced men wooing sharp-tongued women, a million different words arranging and rearranging until it all comes down to _one_ \- love. Lucy has this miraculous ability to fall asleep in the middle of nearly every film - limbs crooked and awry, head dipping farther and farther until he has her cheek moored on his shoulder, her breath careening softly over his neck - only to stir herself back to consciousness just as the conclusion hovers on the horizon. Misunderstandings are put aside, the truth gains momentum, dufus-man and clever-woman forgive and forget, kissing as an elaborate score parades through the background, and move on. Together.

And more often than not, Lucy wanders off to bed as soon as the credits roll, never having watched the messiest parts.

He suspects that this is somehow intentional, though how she pulls it off is a question he can't answer. He knows the difference between fake-sleeping Lucy and real-sleeping Lucy. She's legitimately dozing through the miscommunications, the clashes, the separations. It's like she's willed herself to skip the worst of what she's actually lived through, saving her precious concentration for the ending she still doesn't trust to ever become her own.

That's the unspoken hurdle. She loves _him_. What she doesn't love is the paradox; the one thing that makes them both stronger also turns out to be the Achilles heel of her heart.

She comes - noiselessly, eyes downcast, a mere shadow clinging to the darkness - to his bed on the longest nights. She crawls over him and wedges herself between his body and the wall. For someone who hates small spaces, she seems unusually averse to being the one with the easiest escape plan from the confines of his sheets.

It's hard to remember when it started. Wyatt used to ask questions, pry into the wells of her sad eyes, seek words to go along with the dried tracks of tears on her cheeks. He's never been successful, not even once. Lucy shakes her head, seals her face to the side of his neck, and pretends to sleep. Sometimes he unavoidably falls back into whatever dream she's cut into, too exhausted to do anything but sling an arm over her and grant her what she's come for - a small dose of vital humanity. Other nights he listens intently for hours until she finally succumbs to a few hours of rest, of real surrender.

He doesn't conceal his feelings, but Wyatt hasn't exactly been advertising them either. Not when she's so reticent, not when he's broken things so badly. Not when she hasn't said _it_ back. Not when he realizes he's submerged so far in the gutter of his own worthlessness that some days it's still a challenge to meet her eyes for more than a second or two at a time.

But there's a morning, one that comes after they've been shuffled from one secret government site to the next, that she walks back into the bathroom just seconds after he's entered it. There's an actual functioning lock this time, but he'd been too wrapped up in a stupified daze to use it.

Lucy had showered first that morning. He's normally the earliest riser in the group, but not that day, so he waited without a word. He's gotten damn good at waiting. But then it's his turn once she exits with a small smile that doesn't touch her deep brown gaze, and in another instant he's taking her place in the thin wisp of steam that trails after her. Lucy, steam, shower…

Better to not think too closely about _that_.

And he's only in there for half a moment, so nothing compromising has happened. He's too busy inhaling her - her soap, or maybe it's shampoo, or lotion, or perfume - to begin undressing. God only knows what that exact elixir of scents is composed of, but holy hell is it ever intoxicating. He catches whiffs of it in the air around her from time to time, locks it away a bit longer on the nights she pours her slim body into bed next to him, but this is like a flood, an overdose, an avalanche. He stands perfectly still and just lets this little bit of Lucy envelope his senses, carrying him off to never-never land. A utopia where this scent would always be his to bask in as often as he wished.

And then she comes back into the bathroom unannounced, her hand already raised in explanation. She points at the hairbrush that's still on the counter. She only has one shot at taming those natural waves of hers, and that's long before they start springing back into action. Wyatt doesn't know when he learned that, he's not even sure that she's ever expressly told him as much, but it's there in his brain nonetheless.

Her face indicates that she should be the one who's embarrassed for having to tiptoe back in after she's given the room up to him, but that changes as soon as she takes stock of him.

He's standing eerily still, eyes closed until he belatedly realizes he has an audience, head tipped back slightly, no sign of untangling the drawstring on his sleep pants or unloading his shower kit. He knows he looks like an absolute freak. He's the one who has something to explain, not her.

"It, um...it smells like you. In here." His throat bobs uncomfortably. She doesn't - she isn't - there is no actual romance here anymore, so that just makes him the creepy stalker type, right? It's about as charming as Garcia Flynn gluing his goddamn face to her journal and acting like that makes them peas in a freaking pod. "Sorry. I know that's weird. You smell nice. Really...um, nice."

Her slow-release smile essentially knocks him into next week. Her eyes even brighten, although it's clearly in a way that denotes laughing _at_ him, certainly not with him. As if that makes any difference to Wyatt these days. Lucy snags her brush and nods, looking a little unsure, but there's a beautiful dash of playfulness in the corners of her upturned lips. "Carry on, then."

She snuggles her way into his bed more often after that. Sometimes it's even without the aftermath of her tears. Sometimes he finds no moisture collecting in the hollow of her throat as she slips in beside him. Every so often, he cracks his eyes open just enough to see her smiling into his shoulder. It's progress of the slowest order, but he's grateful for every scrap of headway they make.

The kitchen is more modern in their new base of operations. Hell, _everything_ is more modern in their new base of operations. It's cleaner, a little brighter. They all have their own rooms. And that kitchen - the one that doesn't creak and squeal and threaten to burst into flames with the slightest bit of exerted effort - actually inspires Wyatt to pick up his cooking game by a few degrees.

In turn, Wyatt's elevated range of skill inspires Lucy's curiosity.

It's hell to not kiss her when they cook together. The day comes where she's looking lighter, speaking and sharing and engaging more in her surroundings than anything he's seen from her in what feels like an eternity. She preps some vegetables in the way he's painstakingly taught her - with the assistance of a few bandaids along the way - and then her part is done. The rest is up to him now, but she doesn't beg off to go read or watch TV. She hoists herself up onto the counter and keeps a steady watch over him. He almost drops a bowl beneath her scrutiny. Then it's an entire frying pan that almost goes down, a very full frying pan at that. He's unnerved and embarrassingly turned on by the presence of feet-kicking, spatula-licking, Riesling-sipping Lucy Preston, the one who actually enjoys helping with dinner nowadays. The one who no longer rushes away from him anytime they're alone together for more than a few minutes in the light of day.

It's getting to the point where Wyatt almost feels like it's his turn to create the distance between them. Not because he's on edge with her. Not because he can't get past his guilt. Not because he's unworthy of her. All of those things are a bit true if he's being honest with himself, but the grand sum of those parts still isn't enough to curb his addiction. And like all serious addicts, there's only so much he can get of her like this until he's anxious for more, craving an increased hit, a larger risk, but he can't be the bastard who hurts her that badly twice. He can't let his twitchy, restless nerves spur him into action prematurely.

He's so used to her night time visits by now that it doesn't always register when she appears. His quick trigger of heightened awareness doesn't go off for her anymore. His brain is rewired to accept it for what it is, to know that it's not a threat when she comes padding in, to automatically make room for her without a single flick of an eyelid. That's how he gets himself into trouble, of course.

Wyatt's body does what any man's body does on any random morning, Lucy or no Lucy. He usually extracts himself from the snarl of bedsheets before she's awake, awkwardness averted without a single snag. Simple avoidance. When that doesn't work, he's careful to ease away from her while she stretches and sighs, keeping the blankets tucked up to his waist until she makes her exit.

She's taken both of those options from him when she traps half of him beneath half of her on a chilly-paned October morning. The only surprise is that this exact scenario hasn't happened sooner.

He feels the shot of recognition that boomerangs through Lucy's body as she blinks long eyelashes against his throat. She shifts gently, tactfully, but he can't suspend his muffled groan. The damage is long since done. He's rock hard against the slender leg that's embedded between the pair of his own, too far gone over the galvanizing curve of one breast levelled against his heart. He apologizes through gritted teeth, but she waves it off, eyes skirting toward the door as she chuckles bleakly and pries herself away from him.

"It's not a big deal," she says meekly. "I didn't get to my thirties without knowing how these things work, you know."

He tries to laugh. She sort of matches whatever it is that comes out of him. That's all. She leaves just as unobtrusively as she came, he follows suit once she's gone, and his shower inevitably runs a few minutes longer than usual that day...a few minutes longer that whole week, actually.

No matter what she may have said that morning, there's no contradicting the result - he doesn't wake up to her again for weeks. Not until the tears are back, the lingering fear coiling through her expression, the look of an animal that's been tracked, hunted, and wounded stamped into her smoky eyes.

They don't talk about the incident from before. They actually talk so little about anything, not anymore. Wyatt just rolls with it, not hesitating to drape his arm over her in the small hours once she returns again. They never lose stride with each other. They trade silent grins behind Connor's back when he says something particularly and peculiarly English. Wyatt wordlessly exchanges his snap peas for her extra tomatoes at the dinner table. She saves his life as often as he saves hers while they slingshot from decade to decade, and the language of intimacy expresses so much between them without their bodies ever fitting together in the way that everyone else assumes they are.

That's one more thing he's learned from Lucy Preston. Intimacy isn't sex. It's not like he's never heard that before, but he's certainly never grasped it in the way he does now. She has his every smile, his torrid impulses, his ugliest thoughts, his quietest doubts. It's thanks to her that he stops hating Flynn so much. He rarely balks at dubious orders from Agent Christopher. He makes more of an effort to understand what Jiya and Connor are working on, bends his head over their workstation and listens even when he doesn't comprehend a word. Lucy catches on faster. Where he simply absorbs as much as he can - a function of his duty to the team, nothing more nor less - the process of acquiring new information genuinely energizes her. It's the most incorruptible thing to witness, the purest, as well as the cutest and the dorkiest. Her enthusiasm grips him around the heart and tugs him in further. He wants to hear her every animated thought, to memorize the impressive blaze of intelligence in her eyes. He has tunnel vision for her, the kind that blurs all of his pain and centers all of his sprawling misgivings.

At her own request, he teaches her to shoot in the open field that surrounds their new digs. There are never fewer than three or four Homeland Agents hovering in his peripheral vision as he adjusts her grip, raises her chin, widens her stance. Even with an audience of three or four or a hundred, Wyatt's instinct to stand too close and murmur too low never abandons him.

As for Lucy, she leans in, takes his notes, furrows her brow, and shoots and shoots and shoots until her focused demeanor breaks for a celebratory hug. _Bullseye_. Not once, not twice, but five consecutive times. She cries out gleefully after number five, jumps in place, then wheels around and nearly tackles him to the ground. It's a damn miracle the gun doesn't go off straight into his chest.

"You did it," he hums into her hair, arms tight around her slip of a waist.

"We did it."

They say the same words again on their first successful trip in the Lifeboat without Jiya. It's a trial run, an experiment that could slaughter both of them faster than any bullet or blade could ever manage.

It's Lucy who sits in the pilot's chair, but the effort is a joint one. Neither of them feel overly confident, a fact that's compounded by the silent blasphemy they both feel when they dare to sit where only Rufus could ever truly belong. Wyatt angles his own chair toward the controls as they go through the mental checklist together. Not once, not twice, but five consecutive times.

When they bounce back into the present without incident, Wyatt feels like throwing up, but for once it's not the amped up motion sickness that's gotten ahold of his stomach. It's the feeling of casting the dice into a vacuum of reckless ambiguity and somehow surviving the gamble.

Trip number two goes much in the same way. Lucy flies, Wyatt backs her up and lends support from his usual seat, and they stagger to 1971 and back again in a cloud of shaky smiles.

Jiya nearly collapses when they make it back in one piece the second time. Denise gets a chair beneath her before it's too late, and the relief, the expectancy, the hope - it all slams into Wyatt at once.

Lucy's fingers slide through his. She won't cry, but as he takes in her wide-eyed revelry, he can tell she wants to. They're going to do it. They're going to fix it.

It's Connor who recommends a final test jump. He says it offhandedly, but Wyatt's ears perk at the sound. _False_ offhandedness. That's what gets his attention. His suspicion sharpens into unspoken accusation when Connor throws out a suggested year - 1886.

Wyatt has no memory of Rufus or Jiya ever insinuating that piloting a jump to the nineteenth century is any more challenging than a trip to the twentieth. Nowhere in all the trainings and simulations they've gone through has anyone uttered a word about degrees of difficulty. A jump is a jump, right? The responsibility is huge and terrifying every time, in every year, from San Francisco to the Alamo to Saint-Mihiel.

Lucy senses his hesitation. They can't go anywhere until the Lifeboat is charged again, and then Rittenhouse blasts their way into the '60s before they have a chance to leave for Rufus, so it's a full 48 hours before they're plotting one last trial flight. And in every heartbeat from Connor first suggesting _1886_ to the moment where Wyatt and Lucy approach the metal staircase that will lead them to that exact year, she sees his poorly disguised apprehension. He feels it in the way her fingertips trace over his arm, hears it in her evenly measured voice. She's worried that he's worried.

The door to the time machine clatters shut and it's then - once the world shrinks down and no one can overhear them - that she pulls it out of him. It's just the two of them in a miniscule tin hatch, two teammates where there should be three.

"Wyatt," she asks without really asking at all. "Just say it."

"The year...awfully close to the one we've been training for, isn't it?"

Lucy moves to the chair that his mind still labels as Rufus's. "It is."

"He's being weird. Mason. Don't you think?"

"You didn't ask him why he chose it."

He sits, uses a foot to swivel her in his direction, reaches for her set of buckles with a smirk that's lacking in verve. "Did you?"

"No."

They drop the subject. He pats her thigh once she's securely strapped in, and then she's in command, the glow of a million different buttons and levers carving across her cheekbones. Wyatt stares at her in profile. It's with a conscious, purposeful swallow that he locks away the terror in his chest. Every time they do this, he knows it could be the end. They could vanish forever - easily, unsurprisingly, incontestably. He believes in Lucy like he believes in gravity, like he knows the earth is round and the solar system is vast and the tide never stops crashing over the shore. He also believes that time travel is a voracious monster who's ready to gobble them up at their slightest mistake, never to spit them back out again.

They go through the steps, reciting them out loud together, chanting them like it's their last rites.

The Lifeboat hits the soil of 1886 and they exhale.

A little fresh air, a quick exchange of a hug, the wonder of a sun that shines down on them from an era that's so far before their time. That's it, then back in the time machine they go.

Lucy stays remarkably calm when it all starts to go dark. The panel gets quiet, lights blinking out one by one. The shaking, stumbling force of their journey doesn't end with the normal jerk of a hard landing. Everything just dissolves slowly, the rattling momentum eases into a soft rotation, emergency lights hum at their feet, and they're just… _spinning_.

Not here, not there. It's not 1886 and it's not home. They're trapped in what can only be described as nonexistence. Lost.

He's waiting. Waiting for his body to slowly pull itself apart atom for atom, splattering through the wormhole loop-de-loop of time and space and oblivion. Little bits of his matter becoming nothing more than discarded litter along the coastal highway of foreign, inaccessible galaxies.

Or something like that. Rufus would have corrected him on the finer points, but the only reason Wyatt is this close to disintegrating into the void is because Rufus _can't_ correct him.

Now there's a real loop.

She's tried everything. They both have. Wyatt - despite her furious objections - has long ago unbuckled himself and kneels there with her at the control board, going over every last switch from rote memory, but none of them yields the answer they seek.

Too many minutes have passed them by, if there is such a thing as minutes wherever they are now. Can there be time outside of time?

Lucy stops being the extraordinary risk-taking woman who plants herself at the helm of the ship and carries a gun on every jump. She becomes the Lucy of the Hindenburg. The Lucy who can't breathe because the walls are closing in. They're going to die. She's going to expend her last breath in a tiny, capsized vessel. It's her worst nightmare come to life.

He turns the chair, pulls her forward, wraps his arms around her as she comes to rest in his lap. Her body curls around him there on the floor. He melds his forehead to hers and asks her to look at him, to focus on his eyes.

"You were right," she gasps, "something was different - we should have - why didn't we ask? I - I messed up and now we - "

"Stop. We're in this together. You did everything the same as always. I watched you, Lucy."

Tears are rocketing down her face now. "I'm sorry, Wyatt. I'm so, _so_ _sor_ \- "

He can't tolerate another word of that, so he kisses her.

If she's going to be out of breath and unbalanced, it might as well be for a good reason.

Her hands are fierce against his face, grasping, reaching, unglued. He cups the back of her head and breaks it off once, only to go right back in softly. Calmly. He has no complaints if she wants to consume him in a single bite, but it's doing nothing to bring her panic into check, and that just isn't an option. His last moments with her can't be spent like that.

She relaxes gradually, inch by tenuous inch. Her fingers tremble past his jaw, over his neck, clasp around his shoulders. He whispers her name before sucking her bottom lip into his mouth, gnawing on it lightly. Wyatt drags a hand down her spine and back up again. She sighs at his eventual retreat. Her eyes remain closed, tears still dripping from her face, but the grief is placid now.

"You should have done that a long time ago."

He doesn't respond until she peers up at him, her cinnamon gaze tainted with everything that's in flux right now - her life, her heart - as her lashes clump together, wet and heavy.

"I - _I_ should have kissed _you_ a long time ago?" His voice cracks a little, but he doesn't quit. "I was never going to make the first move, Lucy. Not when… not after what I did to you."

"You're saying my standing reservation in your bedroom didn't make my intentions clear?"

He's gaping at her by now. He knows he is, but his mouth continues to hang open. When she doesn't rescind the question, he finds himself laughing, real and lucid and disbelieving. "Honestly? No. Not exactly."

She grins back at him, then chuckles quietly in return. "Okay, yeah...I guess not."

Wyatt digs his fingers against her shoulder, working out a knot of tension that's always there, one that's tripled in density for obvious reasons. "You can tell me your intentions now, ma'am."

"Ma'am," she repeats huskily. "It's been awhile since I've heard that one."

"It felt a little...off limits, all things considered."

It's an apology and she knows it. Her cheek brushes his, so smooth in contrast to his own. He feels her lips on his ear. "I've been waiting for it to make a reappearance."

He shudders just slightly, her words a bed of hot coals beneath him. "Guess we should make up for lost time then... _ma'am_."

She scours a hand over his jaw, her touch emphatic, urgent. "I love you, Wyatt. I loved you when you told me before, after we lost Rufus. I loved you in Hollywood. I loved you - well, I don't even know when, but way sooner than any logical person could possibly claim it. I love you so much."

 _Love_. How many times had she just said it? Not once, not twice, but five consecutive times. Is that declaration making him dizzy, or is it just a side effect of being barricaded inside a time machine on an aimless trajectory through elusive nothingness?

The answer doesn't matter, not really. She loves him. Lucy Preston loves Wyatt Logan in an empty crater beyond time, torn between centuries, drifting out and away from the world they call home, swirling in infinite circles until they die of dehydration or asphyxiation. Or if that whole time-space continuum thing zaps them to pieces before either of those other two options can claim their lives.

God, if only it had just been him and her all along. Maybe things would have went differently if they'd said it before, whispered it in the firelight of 1941 from the safety net of Hedy's crisp, clean sheets. If Wyatt had been brave, opened up first, then -

The warm clarity of her mouth returns to him, liberates him from the endless chain of what-ifs. He can't undo it now. Neither of them can.

So he kisses her. He murmurs that he loves her too. He holds her as closely as he can, and when that isn't enough anymore, he tilts her back and tries to find a portion of unoccupied floor that's spacious enough to accommodate the imminent payoff of so much damn waiting.

He's still waiting to die, but he's finally about to live again in the only way that matters.

Lucy scoots off of his legs, a few fingers hooked through the collar of his shirt, dragging him after her as she negotiates her way around the chairs. He watches, incredulous, sure that he's the luckiest son of a bitch on earth even if he's not technically _on_ earth right now.

Or at least he was feeling pretty lucky until a slamming force rocks the whole ship, sending her off-kilter in a flash. He hears her startled yelp before he even understands what's happening. Not that he needs to understand. Lucy screams, he reacts. Few things have ever been as simple as that. Nowhere, not even in the center of all their worst pain and poor decisions and canyons full of heartache, has he ever lost track of that blind impulse. Never has he forgotten the intrinsic wrenching hitch in his lungs when he knows she's in trouble.

Wyatt launches forward and clamps one hand around the miniscule target of her wrist, reeling her back in with a savage forcefulness, their heads almost cracking off of each other once she comes surging against him.

The whole machine lurches again. He tries to get them both to their feet, but the pitching motion sends it all to hell before he can get his bearings.

" _Hold on_ ," he calls out gruffly.

She tucks her head into his shoulder and nods. With a strength that actually hurts - insides screeching in opposite directions, arms strained, stomach somersaulting - Wyatt heaves every muscle in his body into one critical objective.

The chair. Rufus's chair. The chair that belongs to neither of them. The chair that has to save them both, because they have no time for anything else.

They're airborne in another crackle of a second. His side catches the frame of the chair hard enough to knock the wind out of him. It's Lucy who scrambles for the restraints, her hands moving fast and frantic. He gets an arm around her, hauls her securely against his chest, only to realize that she's just buckled him in, not both of them.

He wonders if he's hit his head somewhere along the way, because how the hell would she get that damn belt around two of them? Even if there's enough slack to make it work with a bit of finagling, there's no chance of screwing around with making those adjustments while they...while...why did he think -

But there is no more thinking. There's no room for it in his head. It's a white-hot fog. A teeth-jarring crash.

Eventually he hears her again. She's cutting through the drone between his ears, insistent, bordering on bossy. That makes him smile.

"C'mon, Wyatt...you have to let go."

"Hmm?"

She tugs at his arms. Arms that are wrapped around her ribs like he's trying to smother the hell out of her. She's practically wheezing his name over and over again.

"Wyatt... _Wyatt_?"

He struggles to release her even as she does everything she can to peel him off of her. It's some kind of mental block. He lets go, she dies.

"I'm okay, Wyatt. I think we're both okay."

He manages an inch of reprieve and she slips through his arms immediately, sinking to her knees in front of him and pivoting awkwardly, going for the partially fastened buckle that's looped around his waist. Her eyes are so dark, so big, lips parted with a tremoring gasp.

She's so pretty. He tells her that. Maybe. He's not sure his words are working right now.

Her mouth twists up, a wobbling pretense of a smile, so he must have gotten something out. There's a trickle of blood high on her forehead. Trauma rolls through her body in quick successive waves. She can't seem to hold any part of herself still. The instant she has him free from the chair, he chases right after her. Falls to his knees too. Tries to hug her in the stifled fragment of space between the chair and the dash.

"Are we - where…?"

"I don't know." She's shaking even harder now. "I tried, I really did, but I - I don't know."

He closes his eyes and drops his face into the slope of her shoulder. "Maybe not knowing is better."

"Why, so we can finish what we started before finding out if this thing is still on a crash course with permanent annihilation? You prefer blissful ignorance?"

Wyatt leans back, cups her radiant face in his hands, and offers the most philandering smile he can manufacture on such short notice. "I've heard worse ideas…"

She does that unexpected snorting laugh. His favorite one. "God, you're such a bad influence."

The clang of what may very well be a jackhammer thunders against the the hatch. Wyatt reaches for his gun, mostly for a lack of any better plan.

It's for nothing, though, not unless he has some reason to fire off a round or two at a tear-stricken Jiya and an equally grim-faced Agent Christopher.

Lucy shrivels against him as white light filters into the time machine, as if her bones have all wasted away to nothing at the sight of those careworn faces. "So it turns out we're not actually gonna die after all."

He echos the dry humor in her voice, barely holding steady himself. "Dammit. Just when I allow myself to start hoping..."

Her answering laughter - feeble, subdued, but very much real - has him joining in with her. Christopher gives them both a look that implies a joint psych eval and the delivery of two straight jackets might be next on her to-do list, but Wyatt can't bother with an explanation. He's not sure there _is_ an explanation, at least not one that will bolster her confidence in the pair of them.

Life-or-death time machine sex is not the sort of admission he's ever made to a superior. Best to not start down that path now.

He sends Lucy in to see the medic first. His first priority is Connor Mason, but even as he collects himself just enough to jab an incriminating finger squarely against his chest, Wyatt is already losing steam. He's exhausted, he's not making very much sense even to himself, and then there's Jiya diving into the fray, upholding every word Connor says. They claim that the farther back you go, the longer the jump may last, but it's a difference of mere seconds - not minutes or hours or days.

"But it could make a difference?" he asks with flagging determination. "To _us_? To people who aren't...science people?"

Mason looks as defeated as Wyatt feels. "There are billions of things that could make a difference to anyone. To you, to Lucy, to me or Jiya, to Rufus or Anthony or Emma. Adapting to the different variables is not a skill that can be procured overnight. As I've said before, time travel is - "

"Bloody dangerous," Wyatt scoffs, a hand pressing to his forehead to maybe keep his brain from leaking out. "Got it."

There's a beat, then Connor puts a hand on his back and nudges him toward the examination room, the lines in his forehead indicating that he's as weary and ruffled as the other members of their welcoming committee. "It was a hiccup, Wyatt. Two real jumps...they aren't enough to go on, not for this. I wasn't...I just wasn't sure that either of you were truly ready."

Wyatt doesn't flinch at the finer nuances of what's not being said. Mason doesn't want to lose anyone else, but he _especially_ doesn't want to lose his chance at saving Rufus in the same disaster that would claim two more members of this team. He wasn't ready to jeopardize the life of his protege, and after what they've just survived, Wyatt can hardly blame him for that omission.

It's war. It's loss. It's one too many goddamn tragedies connected by so many perilous little threads.

All in a day's work.

He doesn't remember falling asleep. He doesn't even remember getting to his room. The whole thing is so alarmingly seamless that he almost wonders if it's all been a murky dream, a bizarre derivative of his afflicted imagination. One minute he's taking a seat next to a pale, shell-shocked Lucy as a doctor buzzes around both of them, and in the next instant he's waking up in bed next to her.

She's where she always is, crowded between him and the wall. Her eyes are on him as he swims through the heaviness in his head. She rumples her fingers through his hair, soothing his confusion, a dose of vital humanity that grounds him no matter where or when they find themselves in time.

Time. _Time_. It nearly did them in, didn't it?

"That - that really happened, right?" he asks groggily. "We almost died."

She's reluctant to answer. "Almost."

"A hiccup? Is that what they told you it was?"

"Yes. Something like that."

Her words are sticky, resistant. She's holding her own emotions hostage. "Lucy - "

"I can't do it again. Not right away. I just... _can't_."

Wyatt rolls onto his side and fuses a hand to her back, guiding her into him. She expels a choked sigh, burying her face in his shirt. He feels the same rumble of forfeit repeat itself against his sternum - "I can't. I can't get back in there. I can't do it again."

"Shhh, it's okay. You got us back." He kisses her temple, smooths a rambling line up and down her spine. "It's okay, Lucy. No one's gonna force you to do anything you aren't ready to do."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

She sidles closer, the brush of knees and hips and shoulders all inspiring a welcomed shift in the atmosphere as she passes a provoking hand over his torso. "How are you feeling? You're a little more banged up than I am."

He reaches between them and seizes that hand in his, holding it firmly before she can wreak absolute havoc inside of him. "Better and better all the time. Just please don't tell me the one thing I really don't wanna hear."

"Which is?"

"What happens in the Lifeboat stays in the Lifeboat," he says with a suggestive arch of his eyebrows.

"That ball of rust has very little in common with Vegas, Wyatt."

His heart thuds a few decibels louder. "What are you saying, ma'am?"

Lucy's leg threads between his. She pushes gently against his chest until his back is flat against the mattress again. She's halfway over him, her willowy weight pressing down into him, tattered affection shadowing her every move. "I'm saying I love you. Are my intentions clear enough this time?"

It's both familiar and new, a poetic reprise, glorious déjà vu.

He doesn't have to apologize for what she does to him now. Even better, he's not ducking into the shower either, not unless she's coming with him.

"Clear as crystal, babydoll."

Lucy beams down at him, euphoric despite the hundreds of reasons she should feel less than optimistic about him, about the future, about everything. That's the thing about her, though, the incorruptible virtue that he simply cannot comprehend no matter how he tries. She never quits. Never. Not even on a cause as lost as him.

It's how he knows she'll ultimately get back in that machine and take another turn at navigating the pendulum of time. She's going to reclaim that seat again. Not tomorrow, not any time soon, but it will happen. For Rufus, for Jiya, for Wyatt, for herself.

She'll come swinging back around when she's ready, a conviction that's as dependable as gravity. The earth is round, the solar system is vast, the tide never stops crashing over the shore, and Lucy Preston won't stop until she's brought her team home.


End file.
